Armenians Strike at Base of Commonwealth Forces : Ethnic war: They are identified as Karabakh refugees trying to seize weapons after learning Azerbaijani forces had done the same.

Armed Armenians attacked an antiaircraft base of the former Soviet army, killed two soldiers and took senior officers hostage but failed in their attempt at seizing arms for their warfare with Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, a spokesman for the joint armed forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States said Monday.

There were continued reports of bombing and shelling of Armenian and Azerbaijani settlements and of new casualties in the four-year conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region of Azerbaijan with primarily Armenian residents.

Fighting in the region, the most explosive of the many ethnic trouble spots in the former Soviet Union, has intensified in recent months. Both sides have tried to use the withdrawal of Commonwealth troops from the region, which was completed last week, to expand their arsenals.

The Commonwealth’s armed forces and the Armenian government had sharply differing versions of the attack on the antiaircraft base outside Artik, in western Armenia near the Turkish border. The attack occurred Sunday but was only reported Monday.

Vladimir S. Nikanorov, a Commonwealth armed forces spokesman, said Monday that 60 or so Armenian gunmen fired at the military base from roofs of nearby houses and ordered the soldiers to surrender, open the arms depots and abandon the base.

“Shooting had subsided by morning and was not resumed later today,” he said, adding that there was no news as to whether the senior officers at the base, who were taken hostage, had been released.

But the Armenian government said the attackers were not armed bandits or militia but refugees from the Nagorno-Karabakh region who decided to try to seize arms at the base after they learned that Azerbaijani forces had taken large amounts of arms and ammunition from another base in Agdam, Azerbaijan.

“Azerbaijan laid its hands on enough equipment and ammunition to last them up to five years,” said Ruben Shugaryan, spokesman for Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. “This makes the Azerbaijani army capable of waging a large-scale war not only against Karabakh, but against Armenia as well. The residents of Artik, realizing the graveness of the situation, attempted this extreme step in order to equalize the balance somewhat before it was too late.”

Shugaryan said Armenia holds the joint Commonwealth forces responsible for the vast escalation of Azerbaijan’s military potential because they failed to clear out their supplies in Agdam and at other bases in Azerbaijan, as promised.

Russian news service reports said the siege at Artik did not end until after the commanders of the 7th Army, which controls the base, appealed several times to Ter-Petrosyan.

But Shugaryan said local authorities solved the conflict. He also said no hostages were taken.

Fighting continued in and around Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday. And for the fourth day, Azerbaijani fighters shelled Askeran, a largely Armenian town.

No new casualty count was available. Armenian news reports had said 46 people died in the shelling over the weekend. Armenian forces, meanwhile, fired on Agdam and several people were killed, Russian news reports said.

Sergei Loiko, a researcher in The Times’ Moscow bureau, contributed to this report.